The salon, in its first phase, showed and developed tolerance in religion as well as in art and literature. It also encouraged progress and displayed acute discrimination, keeping pace with the time in all that was new and meritorious. It developed individual liberty, public interest, criticism, good taste, and the elegant, clear, and precise conversational language in which France has excelled up to the present day.
When about to build the Hôtel Pisani, Mme. de Rambouillet, having no love for architects, planned its construction without their assistance. She revolutionized the architecture of the time by introducing large and high doors and windows and putting the stairway to one side in order to secure a large suite of rooms. She was also the first to decorate a room in other colors than red or tan. The construction of her hôtel completely changed domestic architecture; and it may be noted that when the Luxembourg was to be built, the designers were instructed to examine, for ideas, the Hôtel de Rambouillet.
Legouvé gives as the object and mission of Mme. de Rambouillet: "to combat the sensualism of Rabelais, Villon, and Marot, to reform society through love by reforming love through chastity; to place women at the head of civilization, by beginning a crusade against vice in the disguise of sentiment. The word 'fame' must, in the seventeenth century, apply to both man and woman, meaning honor for the one and purity for the other. Her ideal falls with the accession of Louis XIV.; the dazzling luxury of royalty hardly conceals, under its exterior elegance, the profound and deep-seated grossness of Versailles and Marly."
To Mme. de Rambouillet, then, belongs the distinction of having been the first to bring together men of letters and great lords on a footing of social equality and for mutual benefit. Her salon and friends continued in the seventeenth century what Marguerite d'Angoulême had begun in the first part of the sixteenth--an intellectual, social, and moral reform.
Many salons which were all more or less patterned after that of Rambouillet sprang into existence. Among these the Academy of the Vicomtesse d'Auchy, with Malherbe as president and tyrant, was of little influence as far as women were concerned. The members were all of second-rate importance, and Malherbe tolerated only the discussion of his verses, while Mme. d'Auchy was better known for her splendid neck than for any intellectuality. Every salon had a master of ceremonies, who performed the rite of presentation; these men were frequently abbés, and some of them, such as Du Buisson and Testu, became famous.
Among the most noted of these salons was that of the celebrated beauty, Ninon de Lenclos, she who called the précieuses the "Jansenists of love," an expression which became very popular. Her salon was situated on the Rue des Tournelles. Ninon de Lenclos was a woman of the most brilliant mind and exquisite taste, and it was at her hôtel that Molière first read his Tartuffe before Condé, La Fontaine, Boileau, Lulli, Racine, and Chapelle, and it was there that he received the principal ideas for his drama.
Ninon became famous for making staunch friends of her former lovers, in which connection some interesting tales are told. She was the mother of two children; upon the arrival of the first, a heated discussion arose between Count d'Estrées and Abbé d'Effiat, both claiming the honor of paternity. When the mother was consulted, she made no attempt to conceal her amusement; finally, the rivals threw dice for "father or not father."
The other child, whose father was the Marquis de Gersay, was the victim of an unnatural passion for his mother with whom, when a young man, he fell desperately in love, being ignorant of their relation. While pleading his cause, he learned from her lips the secret, and, in despair, blew out his brains, a tragedy which apparently had no effect upon the mother. At one time, at the request of the clergy Ninon was sent, for impiety, to the convent of the Benedictines at Lagny.
Among her friends she counted the greatest men and women of the day and her salon was the foyer of savoir-vivre, of letters and art. At the age of sixty she met the Great Condé, who dismounted to greet her, something that he very seldom did, as he was not in the habit of paying compliments to women. The saying: Elle eut l'estime de Lenclos [she had the esteem of Lenclos] became a popular manner of expressing the fact that a certain woman was especially esteemed. Even to the last (she died at the age of eighty-five), Ninon preserved her grace, beauty, and intelligence. Colombey calls her La mère spirituelle de Voltaire [the spiritual mother of Voltaire].
The generality of women had their lovers; even the famous Mlle. de Scudéry, in spite of her homeliness--she was a dark, large-boned, and lean sort of old maid--had admirers galore; among the latter was Pellisson who was said to be so ugly "that he really abused the privilege--which man enjoys--of being homely."